Hand Crafted Cedar Furniture

How Hand Crafted Cedar Furniture is Made
Walk through the steps followed to hand craft natural rustic cedar furniture -- from lumbering to assembly:

Introduction
There are a lot of steps to making a piece of cedar furniture for you to enjoy. Let's walk through what it takes:

Foresting and Lumbering
Northern White Cedar is not that easy to come by. Its most common location is in swampy areas. This makes it hard to log, so it's no surprise that the most common logging times for White Cedar is in the frozen winter and the dry summer.
White Cedar can also be found on slopes where other species cannot thrive. It grows to only about 12-18" diameter; much larger than that tends to rot the heart (especially in wetter areas).
Cedar is generally not even considered worthy enough to be dumped into pulp for paper production. In many eyes, it is a nuisance at most or too small to deal with. It is not "farmed" like other woods, so there is no major re-forestation efforts required like for other timberlands. While not actually on the endangered list, White Cedar is in danger of depleted sources.

But, Northern White Cedar is worth the extra time and effort to find it. It is one of nature's most enduring woods. Becasue most of it grows near swampy water basins, it has a slow rate of decay and a natural resiliency to rot and disease.
White Cedar is a soft wood that takes on a natural, unique character as it dries and cures. Its natural aroma and oils acta as a mild insect repellent.

Cut and Dry and Cut
Once cedar has been harvested and selected, it is dimensioned at the sawmill. Round, tree trunks are cut in large semi-open mills to generate dimensioned lumber for sale, typically ending up in flat or square stock.

After, the wood is loaded and shipped to the manufacturing area. All wood is then cut and dried. The order of these operations depends on what the wood will be used for:

Squares/Round Stock: Square pieces are first fed through a doweling machine to make a consistent log pole to be used as a post in manufacture. Then, the round stock is "stickered" (using separators between row piles to provide space between stacked levels for air to circulate during the drying process)and set out in the open to dry for 2-3 weeks.

Flat Stock: Flat stock is stickered right away so that the stack can be loaded into a kiln for 1-2 weeks to dry. When it emerges from the kiln, it is then planed to its final dimension before manufacturing.

All wood is dried prior to being used to make products. Sawyers use a cut list to chop the different length parts that are needed to maximize yield of the wood supply.

Production

SHAPING/ROUTERING
Most products required either shaping or routering to form a part or to finish edges. This is usually done my a mechanical shaper or by a CNC (Computerized Numerical Control) machine.

SANDING
Typically, most products, unless rustic, will have most surfaces and edges sanded.

DRILLING
Almost every product requires some sort of drilling, usually pre-drilled holes for fasteners (screws, nails, bolts, etc.).

ASSEMBLY
With the high cost of transportation these days, most products are sent to the customer sub-assembled or as kits for the customer to assemble himself. Manufacturers will typically create large sub-assemblies, which means they partially build the different main parts used in the products.

FINISHING
Natural products, of course, are "finished" without any extra finishing steps. When exposed to the elements, White Cedar will gradually turn a warm grey. Sometimes, these woods are stained to add color or to preserve the "just milled" appearance before sending out to a customer.